A Lantern in the Window (3 page)

Everywhere Annie looked
was the mark of a woman who’d made this house into a cozy
home.

Noah Ferguson had told
Annie in his first letter that he was a widower, that his wife and
baby son had died two years before.

It was obvious that Noah's
wife had loved this house, Annie thought uneasily. Her touch was
everywhere, although as Annie looked more closely, there was also a
general air of neglect. There was a thick layer of dust on the
dresser, and the curtains were limp with dirt. Although the wide
boards on the floor showed signs of a recent sweeping, it was plain
they hadn’t been scrubbed in some time.

Near the heater were two
doors. One was shut, but the other was ajar, and suddenly, a loud
banging came from behind it, as though someone was hammering on the
floor with a heavy object.

"Lordie, that scared me.”
Annie’s hand went to her heart. “I forgot there was anybody else
here.”

Bets’s eyes were wide and
fearful.

“I think it’s Mr.
Ferguson’s father,” Annie indicated. "I will see to him. You warm
yourself by the fire.”

Hesitantly, she tapped at
the door and then pushed it open so she could enter the small room.
It was painted blue, and on the wall was a picture of a smiling
cherub cuddling a kitten. A chair, a dresser, and the single bed
took up most of the space.

"Mr. Ferguson?" Annie said
in a hesitant tone, standing beside the bed. “I’m—I’m Annie. I’ve
only just arrived. Is there something you want?”

The white-haired man lying
propped on pillows in the disheveled bed held a cane tight in his
right fist. When he saw Annie, he lifted it up and brandished it
threateningly, making strange guttural noises in his
throat.

She cried out and leaped
back, certain he was about to strike her.

His face was twisted
grotesquely to one side, and it was plain to Annie that his right
hand and side were useless. It was also obvious that he was in a
furious temper.

Annie stared at him,
horrified. Was he a madman? Noah Ferguson had mentioned his father
in his letters, but all he’d said was that the older man was “in
ill health.”

He stopped trying to speak
and lay back panting, staring at Annie with the same coal-black,
angry look his son had given her earlier.

“Can—can I get you
something, sir?” she asked again.

He used the end of the
cane to gesture at a water glass and Annie cautiously sidled over
and snatched it up.

“Water? I’ll bring it
directly.” She backed out of the room, expecting at any moment that
he’d throw the cane at her.

In the outer room, Bets
was coughing again, huddled in an exhausted heap on a chair by the
fire. Annie went over and felt her head.

“You’re burning up. We need
to get you to bed, sweets.”

She filled the water glass
from the pail on the washstand, but before she could take it back
into the bedroom, the awful hammering began again.

Annie rolled her
eyes and blew her breath out in an exasperated
whoosh
.
He was
trying her patience, that was certain.

She walked quickly back
into the bedroom and over to the bed, holding out the glass. In a
firm tone, she said, “Here you go, and I'd be grateful if you’d
please stop that banging, Mr. Ferguson.”

The old man made a
grumbling noise, put the cane on the bed beside him and snatched at
the glass with his good hand, but he misjudged and bumped Annie's
arm. The glass spilled, sloshing most of the water on the patchwork
quilt that covered him.

With a roar of
absolute rage, he grabbed the glass and flung it against the
blue-painted wall. It smashed into shards, and Annie let out a
shriek and ran for the door. Trembling, she closed it firmly behind
her,
and the now-familiar thumping began
again.

She wasn't going back, she
told herself. Thirsty or not, he’d have to wait until his son came
home and tended to him.

With the constant banging
as accompaniment, Annie set out bowls, and she and Bets ate the
thick, aromatic soup simmering on the back of the cook stove. A
loaf of freshly baked bread stayed warm beneath a snowy napkin, and
there was butter in a bowl.

Annie sent Gladys a
heartfelt thank-you, but the incessant banging was difficult to
ignore, and her hand trembled as she spooned up the soup and spread
butter on a slice of the crusty bread.

Bets ate only a spoonful
of soup, took several bites of bread, then sank back in her chair,
exhausted.

The young girl needed
rest, but where would she put Bets to sleep? Hurriedly finishing
her meal, Annie lit a candle and peeked into the other ground-floor
bedroom. It was obviously Noah’s room; his clothing hung on wall
pegs, and two pair of immense boots stood side by side on the
floor.

Feeling like an intruder,
Annie stepped inside, swallowing hard as she looked at the wide
double bed. Her mind’s eye filled now with the image of the
muscular giant who, in name at least, was her husband. Her cheeks
grew hot at the thought of climbing into that bed beside
him.

“I’d say
you have some explaining to do, madam.”
His parting words echoed in her head.
Well, Mr.
Ferguson, you have a bit of explaining to do yourself,
she
concluded.
Such as why you didn’t tell me the
facts about that impossible old man.

Next she ventured up
the staircase with her candle, anticipating an unfinished loft,
drafty and primitive. There were two doors, and when she opened the
one on the right, her eyes widened and she
caught her breath with pleasure.

Here was a cozy little
gabled room with a single bed covered with a warm quilt. There was
a beautiful old dresser against the wall and a rocking chair beside
the window. A wooden chest stood at the foot of the bed,
hand-carved in a beautiful pattern of birds and flowers. It was the
gnarled pipe and the tin of tobacco resting on top of the chest
that told Annie this must have been the old man’s room before he
became ill.

She looked around again,
more carefully this time. In a corner was a box of wood-carving
tools and several small blocks of wood, one of them half carved
into the rough shape of a bird. She remembered the twisted claw
that was his hand, and she felt a stab of compassion for the wild
old man trapped in the bedroom downstairs.

She peeked behind the
other door before she went down.

It was an unfinished
attic, and the candle sent eerie flickers of light over a cradle, a
high chair, a box spilling over with toys—sad reminders that a baby
had lived in this house not long ago.

Annie loved babies. Her
throat grew tight and she quickly shut the door and hurried
downstairs.

In front of the heater,
she helped Bets take off her clothing. Her sister was exhausted and
sick. Annie sponged her down quickly from a basin, rubbing her dry
with a clean hessian towel she found in the drawer of the
washstand. From their trunk, she took a thick flannel nightdress
and fresh under drawers and bundled her sister into them. She urged
Bets up the stairs and then tucked her into bed in the cozy little
room, pressing a kiss on her sister’s flushed cheek. Bets sighed
and was asleep in seconds.

Downstairs, Annie realized
that at some point the floor banging had stopped. She tiptoed to
the old man’s door and peeked in. He was snoring heavily, cane
propped beside the bed, damp quilt thrown on the floor. She drew
the covers up over him, blew out the lamp, and brought the damp
quilt to dry by the heater.

The farmhouse was silent
except for the crackling of the flames in the two stoves and the
occasional gust of wind outside.

More than anything,
Annie wanted a wash, and she’d better hurry, before
he
got
back.

She stripped off every
scrap of her soiled clothing and lathered a cloth from the bar of
yellow soap. Luxuriously, beginning with her face and working
downward, she methodically washed and rinsed every inch of herself,
glorying in the wonderful sensation of being clean
again.

Her bone-thin body ached
as if every muscle had been strained to the breaking point, and she
longed to be able to lie down somewhere and sleep as Bets was
doing, but she didn’t dare give in to the bone-crushing weariness.
She couldn’t even put on a nightdress. She opened her trunk and
found a clean dress, underwear, and stockings, and put them
on.

She intended to stay
alert, because when Noah Ferguson returned, he wasn’t going to get
the best of her.

She glanced at the room
where the old man slept, and shuddered.

Maybe she’d been less than
honest in her letters, but it seemed that Noah Ferguson wasn’t far
behind her when it came to leaving out important
details.

Annie’s mouth tilted in a
rueful grin.

Maybe after all was said
and done, the pair of them were made for each other after
all.

The wind had quieted, but
it was black-dark and icy cold by the time Noah again drove into
his farmyard late that evening.

He was in a foul mood.
Gladys Hopkins, kind as she was, talked far too much. All the way
to the Hopkins homestead, she’d blathered on and on, all of it
about his new wife.

"That red hair of hers is
a caution, don’t you think, Noah? And she looks mighty frail, poor
soul. Makes a body wonder if folks in the city get enough to eat,
don’t it?”

Noah made an indeterminate
noise in his throat and clicked his tongue, flicking the reins so
the team would go faster.

Unfortunately, Gladys went
right on talking.

"But those eyes, my stars,
Noah, I never in all my bom days saw eyes that shade of green
before. Must be what the books call emerald, wouldn’t you say? And
big like saucers, why they seem to swallow her whole face, don’t
they? Long eyelashes too. Awful pale complexion, though. Needs some
good old farm grub to fatten her up some. Now how old did you say
she was, again?”

Fortunately, he
hadn’t said, and he didn’t now. "Old enough to wed,” he
growled.
Old enough to deceive an honest
man.

Gladys wasn’t in the least
put out. "Her sister’s a quiet little thing, ain’t she? Not a
single word out of her. Looks to be about the same age as my Rose.
Rosie’s gonna be over the moon when she hears there’s a girl her
age over at your place. She'll pester me to death wantin’ to visit.
Now, Noah, my experience with girls that age is they never stop
talking. Just you wait till she gets over her fit of shyness, won’t
be a quiet moment. I think you did good, the two of them will be a
big help with Zachary, that’s certain.” She paused for a moment,
then added in a different tone, “Your poor old dad ain’t doin’ too
good, is he? You sure had your share of trouble, Noah, first Molly
and the boy, and now Zachary.”

Damnation. With all the
goings on, Noah hadn’t given a single thought to the inevitable
meeting between the two females and his father. He felt a twinge of
apprehension and a renewed surge of guilt. He ought to at least
have warned Annie.

“How was he today, Gladys?”
Noah fervently hoped that Zachary was having one of his rare quiet
periods, but Gladys's response settled that idea.

"Contrary. Threw a cup at
me, he did,” she said with a sigh. "And he banged that infernal
cane on the floor most of the day. It beats all how a kind, sweet
gentleman like your father was could turn so willful now he's
sick,” she commented with a shake of her head.

“Mind you, I recollect
Harold’s aunt, sweetest old thing—”

Noah was relieved beyond
measure when at last Gladys was safely inside her own house and he
was free to ride home in silence. Trouble was, some of what she’d
prattled on about seemed stuck in his head.

Annie did have amazing
green eyes, he conceded. And some secret part of him was immensely
relieved that she wasn’t grossly fat. He preferred a slender woman.
He wondered what all that wild, curling hair would be like, loose
down her back.

The need for a woman in
his bed had been growing more urgent as time blurred the pain of
Molly's death. Part of him had been anticipating the bodily
pleasure of having a woman beneath him again.

But this woman—well, it
wasn’t at all certain she’d be staying, he reminded himself. God
only knew what the real facts were about her, and until he knew for
certain, he’d not be beguiled by the demands of a healthy
body.

A horrible thought struck
him. Maybe she’d lied about working in the mill. Maybe she’d been a
strumpet, a woman of easy virtue.

But reason asserted
itself. Surely there was something about her, a kind of innocence,
that would be impossible to pretend?

But what was the truth? He
was convinced that hardly one single thing she’d said about herself
in those damnable letters was the least bit honest. At the thought
of her duplicity, he grew angry all over again, and he held firmly
to his righteous outrage the rest of the drive home.